Salesnet CRM Success Story - ITSM Academy

Customer Name

ITSM Academy

Industry

Training and Education

Business Description

ITSM Academy is an accredited full service provider of IT Service Management (ITSM) education, teaching companies across the U.S. how to deliver customer-centric IT services at reasonable costs. As experts in processed-focused IT Service Management, ITSM Academy has to ensure its own processes withstand the rigorous standards they teach every day. For Lisa Schwartz, one of the owners, finding a CRM tool she could customize for the multiple processes they rely upon was a challenging, but critical task.

For instance, their lead management process is key to keeping revenue coming in, but they didn't have the technology to ensure leads didn't fall through the cracks. Leads come to ITSM Academy through their website "contact us" form. Prospective customers indicate interest in a variety of offerings, including public classes, corporate classes, eLearning, courseware or books. Timely follow up on a prospective customer's interests was a critical factor in differentiating ITSM Academy from competitors and crucial to driving sales.

A key to the successful growth of the Academy was the ability to efficiently and effectively manage the multi-step, multi-person process required to deliver corporate and public classes. ITSM Academy's system was very limited in its abilities to track, link and coordinate everyone's activities. They lacked the visibility to see whether a vital step was completed before moving onto the next one. In addition, without a quality system to support the process, it was easy to overlook the due dates for each step, which resulted in last minute scrambles to meet deadlines and deliver classes as promised.

CRM Customized to ITSM Academy's Processes

Schwartz evaluated several solutions to solve these challenges. She recalls, "We looked at a variety of different CRM solutions, but only Salesnet gave us the flexibility to customize the software based on our processes, instead of the other way around."

ITSM Academy could easily build each of their different sales and service processes into the software. For instance, now when a website visitor fills out a "contact us" form, Salesnet CRM sends the appropriate auto-response email immediately. Within four business hours, company representatives can send a customized e-mail to the prospective customer based on that person's interests. Proposal documents are already loaded into the Salesnet library, and it takes fewer than 10 minutes to generate a proposal. Representatives can quickly and accurately create and send a proposal within eight business hours.

"A more efficient process has really boosted our closing rate," states Schwartz. "We frequently win business just because we walk the talk - prospects know that we are experts in process because they can see it in our interactions with them."

For classroom delivery, ITSM Academy is able to incorporate every step required to sell and deliver a corporate class into Salesnet. The system guides each person involved in the sales and delivery cycle through the process, ensuring that no steps are forgotten and that everything is done on time. Detailed reports show every item vital to making a classroom delivery successful.

Keeping it Simple Leads to Impressive Results

ITSM Academy's built in processes are streamlined with Salesnet. Every day each member of the ITSM Academy Sales/Ops Team logs into Salesnet and immediately sees a color-coded, prioritized list of all tasks for the day, week and upcoming months.. They also immediately see their Salesnet Message Center notifications alerting them to a message or task they need to act upon quickly. For ITSM Academy, a Salesnet Message Center notification signifies an opportunity that is one step closer to producing revenue. Follow up tasks are prioritized, and they're clearly guided through the pertinent next steps. The adoption of Salesnet CRM by sales, marketing and operations has built a level of trust across the organization, as everyone understands what needs to be taken care of first in order to meet business goals.

Since implementing Salesnet in 2005, ITSM Academy has achieved 700% growth year to year. "There are a variety of factors behind our success," recalls Schwartz. "But a lot of it is due to Salesnet.. Having all of our processes built into Salesnet has allowed us to not only do twice the amount of work in half the amount of time, but to do it more consistently and effectively."

"I know the tool was the right choice for us," concluded Schwartz. "There is not a week that goes by without at least one of my team saying, 'I love Salesnet' or 'Salesnet rocks'. That is extremely gratifying to me. This tool allows my team to excel at their jobs. As a business owner, there is nothing better than that."